Video Transcript for Installing the Draw-Tite Max-Frame Trailer Hitch Receiver on a 2025 Kia Niro

Hi, this is Scott with etrailer. Today we're taking a look at and installing our Draw-Tite Class 3 Hitch for a 2025 Kia Niro. Our Draw-Tite hitch we have on our Kia today is going to be a hidden cross tube design, so you're not gonna see any of the cross tube that comes across. That's all gonna be tucked up behind your rear fascia. All you're gonna have sticking out is gonna be this portion of your receiver here. It's gonna be a nice black finish.

It's gonna be more of a powder coat, kind of a gloss black. It's gonna hold up really good to corrosion. You're not gonna get a bunch of rust on it. It's gonna also be really good at holding up to the scratches and nicks and stuff like that, so it'll look good for you for a long time. As far as weights with this hitch, we're gonna have a tongue weight rating of 200 pounds and that's gonna be the weight pushing down on the lower portion of your hitch.

That's gonna include your bike rack with all of your bikes on it, that weight combined. And also it would also combine the weights of your cargo carrier with everything you have on that as well. As far as towing capacity, this one's gonna have a gross trailer weight rating of 2,000 pounds. That's gonna be the weight of your trailer and everything that you have on it. Now keep in mind you do want to take a look at your owner's manual and make sure you don't exceed any number as far as the maximum tow rating on your car or your hitch.

So you wanna stick with the lowest number between the two. Our Draw-Tite hitch is gonna have a two inch receiver opening that's gonna accommodate all of your common accessories that are out on the market today. The two inch is basically the go-to. It's going to have a 5/8 pin opening, so you're gonna have your standard pin that can go right through there. That's what's gonna hold in any of your accessories.

This hitch will not come with a pin, so you'll have to pick one up here at etrailer when you put in your order. Or a lot of your accessories will come with a pin, so keep that in mind as well. Another good option is the locking pin option for these. Say you're out on the bike trail and you have went on down the trail and you've got your bike rack on the back and you want to make sure it's secured on there. What I would do is just get the locking pin type. That way I can lock it in place that way while I'm gone nobody can take my bike rack. And for your safety chain loops, you're gonna have this welded on style loop and it's gonna accommodate either your S style hooks or your clevis style hooks. So that'll keep you set up for your towing needs. As far as measurements go, from the center of the pinhole out to the edge of the bumper, we're looking at right around three inches. With that measurement, that's the measurement you're gonna want to need if you have any folding accessories, you can kind of check that out and make sure when you fold it up your accessories don't make contact with the back of your vehicle. Now from the top of our receiver tube to the ground, we're looking at 12 inches. And with that number you can take a look at your accessories and see if you need any rise in any of the shanks that you have on 'em, just so you have a little more clearance for your bike racks or your cargo carriers. As far as installation goes for this hitch, you will have to drop your exhaust and kind of work it into place a little bit, but it's really not too bad. If it's something you really don't have time to do yourself you can take a look at our dealer locator and get something installed locally for you, or if you feel like doing it yourself, stick around and watch our video and we'll help you get it installed. To start our installation we're gonna need to get our exhaust drop down a little bit. So what we're gonna do is we're gonna take our cam buckle strap and find a good place that we can hook our hooks on. Now with that, we can just tighten up our strap and that's gonna help support our exhaust when we take our isolators loose. To make removing our isolators a little bit easier, we like to take a little bit of soapy water. All we have is just some dish soap and some water and just get that sprayed on our isolators. We're gonna have these two in the back and the one here in the front, spray them down real good. Now once we do that, just wanna wiggle your exhaust around and kind of get your isolators broke loose by hand. And that's gonna work some of that soap and water into 'em. And all that's gonna do is make 'em a little bit easier for us to pop 'em off. Now we can take a crowbar or an isolator removal pliers or big screwdriver, whatever you got, and just find a good place to get into the isolator and just pop it loose. Sometimes you can do this part by hand. Once you get it started, it will pop right off for you like this one. I'll just go ahead and pull that one right off. Now that we have all of our isolators off, we can just hold up on our exhaust and let down on our strap. This gives us a little room to work and we'll hold it right there. Now if your Kia has this box right here, we're gonna need to get this moved out of the way. So we're gonna take a 12 millimeter socket and we have three fasteners around this we're gonna back off. (drill grinding) Now on this black box we have here, you're gonna have this silver part up in here and it's gonna have these tabs that kind of bite into the bolt itself. It won't let you pull it down because it bites onto it. So what you're gonna need to do is take a pick or maybe a small screwdriver and just kind of pull these back. Don't worry about bending 'em back and having 'em stay back 'cause when we put our nut back on here, that's gonna push that back in place so you're fine, but we still need to be able to pop this off out of the way. We're gonna have two of these. So I'll do that with this one and the one up here. And then we'll pull this out of the way. Now we're gonna have this little plug. We're gonna need to pop this little, there's a clip on the other side of it, kind of hard to get at. Just push you on it and then pull back. It's in there pretty tight. So just get that to undo. And the reason we're doing that is it's gonna allow this to come down just a little more for us. Give us a little more room to work. Now it does have hoses connected to it. We're not gonna undo any of those. We're just gonna let it hang here. And we're gonna do our best to get around this to get our hitch installed. Now on the passenger side of our hitch, you're gonna have space replace that come in your kit. So what I did is I just taped this one on for now and I want to get this one side bolted into place and then we'll see if the spacer plate will fit on the other side. If not, we may be going with just the one spacer if it's too tight to get that one through. So now I'm just gonna lift my hitch into place. We want to go up and over and clear our box up over our exhaust. May have to pull down your box a little bit. We want to get behind our fascia with our hitch. Now we have our hardware started on this side. And as far as your hardware goes in your hardware kit, you're gonna have a bolt, you're gonna have your spacers and you're gonna have your conical washers. You want your teeth, the part that have the teeth sticking out pointed towards the hitch. We just wanna assemble it like that and put them in place. So now we're just getting those on their finger tight on both sides. Now what I want to do is I'm gonna torque down this side that has the spacer and that'll draw our hitch over a little bit. And that's gonna allow me to see how much room I end up with on the other side to see if I can get that spacer to fit. So I'm gonna go ahead and get this one torqued down to the specifications listed in the instruction manual. On our driver's side, we did attempt to get that plate, the little spacer plate put in place and there's just no way we would get that to fit. So we're gonna go ahead and tighten 'em down without that. And it seems to be just fine. So what we're gonna do is go ahead and get it all torqued down to the specifications listed in our instruction manual. Now that we have all of our hardware torqued down, we're just gonna go ahead and go back through and get everything we took off put back in place. And we'll start with our box here on our driver's side. Make sure to remember to get that plug in plugged back in 'cause it is kind of hidden back in there. Make sure you get that plugged in. Now to get our exhaust put back in place, I like to go ahead and give a little spray on our isolators with our soapy water. That's gonna help everything pop back in place. Let's give them all spray. Now we'll just lift our exhaust back in place and get 'em popped back on. Now we can remove our cam buckle strap. And that was a look at our Class 3 Draw-Tite hitch for a 2025 Kia Niro. I'm Scott with etrailer. Thanks for watching.